


What I Would Burn

by tameila



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26165974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tameila/pseuds/tameila
Summary: She’s done this dozens of times. Pack the feelings away. Hold her friends’ ruined bodies together. Heal. Smile and remind them to keep fighting. There’s always something more. Revivify. Feel their breath return to them and tell herself that that’s enough. Pack away the rest. The world needs them, and they need her, and she can do it.
Relationships: Scanlan Shorthalt/Pike Trickfoot
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	What I Would Burn

**Author's Note:**

> August's Pikelan Day theme was 'Putting Pike Back in the Narrative', and this has been a very painful mental image that I've been holding onto for a while now. It takes place during the Raishan fight in ep 83 when Pike's revivify spell on Scanlan fails. During the show, Ashley was absent and Pike was being played by Laura and Liam, and I always felt that this moment had the potential to be an incredibly potent RP scene if Ashley had been there, so this is my take on what that might have looked like.

Pike’s had this nightmare.

Her family falls around her. Struck down and stumbling up only to fall again as an invisible whisper of death sweeps amongst them. She cannot stop it. She’s powerless and targeted for death, same as them. They shouldn’t have come here.

A spell strikes her armor.

She’s had this nightmare.

A deep searing pain builds from the tips of her fingertips to the hollow of her ribs, and she’s choking, tearing apart, disintegrating, and her family is dying around her and please, please wake up, _please_ — There’s a flash. Her being knits back together, twice as terrible as falling apart, and her blood drums through her. A warmth with gritted teeth.

Not today.

Pike’s had this nightmare, and she wishes it was just that — a nightmare, not what it is: coming back only to fall back again, coughing up ice from her lungs and twisting, writhing, _praying_ on the ground. She can hear the pop of Percy’s gun. Scanlan is convulsing on the ground. His blood dashed across the stone. There’s nothing there, but his body tears. He hits the ground, and — She can hear Grog roaring, rageful, _pained_ and hear the whip of air around his axe as he tosses it at the nothingness that — Scanlan is still, and Pike chokes on a sob that burns like frost in her throat.

Exhaustion shakes through every inch of her.

It’s not a new feeling.

When she pushes to her feet, she does not stumble or waver.

She’s done this dozens of times.

Pack the feelings away. Hold her friends’ ruined bodies together. Heal. Smile and remind them to keep fighting. There’s always something more. Revivify. Feel their breath return to them and tell herself that that’s enough. Pack away the rest. The world needs them, and they need her, and she can do it. She can —

Scanlan’s blood seeps between the fingers of her gauntlets as she pushes his torn torso back together. Pike breathes, even and purposeful. His eyes are wide and frightened and hazy with death. Tears burn at the corner of hers, but she holds steady.

 _I need you to come back_.

She prays.

She grips her holy symbol, slick and warm with blood, and she prays.

 _Tell me not to cry_. Tears blur her vision. _Ask me to hold you_. He’s so terrifyingly still. _I can’t raise Kaylie all by myself_ — _I can’t do this_ — all of this — _by myself_.

I _need you to come back_.

But —

There’s no light here.

Pike’s breath stutters.

In her arms, eyes wide and frightened, body torn and broken, Scanlan lays still.

Her holy symbol slips from her fingers.

No.

“Scanlan…”

She’s done this dozens of times.

“Scanlan, _please_.”

Why now? Why him?

“Sarenrae — “ Pike gasps around her panic, eyes turning skywards, but she’s alone. No light can touch such a cursed place, cold and insidious, like poison dripping from a dragon’s maw, like death that comes unseen. Even Sarenrae had to leave her here. Alone. Even Scanlan had to —

Pike cradles Scanlan to her chest. Her face buries into the side of his neck with a stuttered sob. Against her tear-stricken cheek, he’s bloodied and cold, but it’s him and she swears — for a moment — just a trembling moment — she can sense the thin thread that lingers and holds him to the material plane. She wants to scream, wants to thrash her way through every piece of the veil that holds that thread beyond her reach. She wants to destroy heaven and hell and every trifling, apathetic existence in between that would keep him from her.

For Scanlan, for his consistent warmth, for that lopsided way his smile tilts when he’s being sincere, for his daughter whom he loves more than he loved apathy, she’ll burn it all down.

A rush of magic sweeps past Pike as something falls away, a spell, a _cowardice_ , and a shadow falls over her and Scanlan. Pike burns. Her lips, once trembling over sobs, pull back as her teeth grit and gnash. Her eyes, once downcast and watery, rise with purpose and grief and insurmountable fury as they take in the immense form of Raishan.

and she _burns_.


End file.
